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áre

Áre is also the name in Quenya of the thirty-first letter of the Tengwar alphabet. In Quenya this letter was originally named Áze and represented Z in written Quenya, but over time the phonemes for "z" and "r" merged, the letter was renamed Áre, and it became superfluous. This letter was then renamed Essë and represents SS, but only in written Quenya.[2]

As noted, J.R.R. Tolkien gave the etymological root of the word for "day" as AR1, which means that those words had always the radical letter r from Primitive Quendian. However, in Appendix E he also gave the ancient form of Áre as Áze, which can not be reconciled with the older etymology since there is no sense in Primitive r becoming archaic z and then re-evolving to Quenya r again.

According to our comprehension of the evolution of Quenya, the z sound evolved from Primitive d or Primitive s[4] as in SRIS > hriz "to snow". This, combined with the Sindarin element as of Asfaloth (meaning "sunlit foam")[1] shows that Tolkien altered the derivation, by changing theoretically the root AR to AS.